


Untitled

by acceptnosubstitutes



Category: Falling Skies
Genre: F/M, I've headcanoned Dai's last name is Harde, because it amuses me, but they exist so this isn't gen, pairings are more or less just mentioned, season 3 spoilers of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:31:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acceptnosubstitutes/pseuds/acceptnosubstitutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't my life. Tom Mason is trapped in a nightmare confusing his past with his present. She remembers him - but only the man he isn't any longer. He doesn't recognize him at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

**Author's Note:**

> This was written based on the preview after the premier, and I'm headcanoning that woman standing by Tom (toweling her hair off to the side) is Rebecca Mason. May or may not turn this into a series but for now, it's a stand alone drabble. Mostly angst and pain ahead. Also, it's always Karen. Always.

It’s torture enough, standing next to his very dead wife, watching her towel dry her hair after a long, hot shower. Her smile simultaneously makes his mouth copycat, makes him  _ache_. Fumbling with the lock to the liquor cabinet minutes later, Tom tosses back two glasses while Rebecca hums in the kitchen, frying an omelet.

But where’s the sense  _he_  would be here, at Boston University and in Tom’s office? There’s a perfect memory of a jewelry store stored away in the back of Tom’s mind, pristine even in the face of an alien invasion.

Tom watches Dai turn around, slowly, as if the universe is a tease, and there’s nowhere at all Tom can look that’ll ease the sudden lump in his throat.

It should be odd seeing Dai in something other than a blue vest, simple t-shirt and jeans, but it’s not. The suit he’s wearing is of good material, even if Tom can’t pinpoint the designer, and it fits Dai well.

Snug, but not too tight, pressed neat and clean with a kind of lethal professionalism that feels right at home. In the midst of danger, violence, taunt guillotine forever balancing, readjusting, distributing, snapping. In the middle of scholarly inquiry, dusty old books, and bored college students.

Torture enough to see Rebecca, but at least she knew who he was. Dai doesn’t recognize Tom.

This man appraises him with a cool politeness that doesn’t bear inkling into what’s going on in that head of his. It took Tom months,  _months_ , and copious applications of steady prodding for that look to fade into genuine warmth, not a breakthrough but a beginning.  Now he’ll have to start all over again.

Tom clears his throat. He forces a smile for the inquisitive glance it attracts.

“Can I help you?” There he goes. Words Tom, complete sentences.

They’re interrupted by a knock at Tom’s office door. He turns with hand on the door knob. Eerie prickling makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise, disorienting double sense something is slipping away behind him.

It doesn’t fade until Tom is facing the window again and Dai is still there. Who picks up on some residual trace, gaze focused in thought, on Tom, before turning to the guest at the door.

“Ah yes,” says the Dean, familiar grey patterned suit and oddly sharp smile every bit the same. “Forgive me Professor Mason, but my office has recently been requisitioned,” and there’s the pursed lips, just this side of professionally annoyed sigh, “as an aquarium. Your office was closest.”

Senior prank, Tom’s tenth year teaching, in which vast amounts of fish managed to accumulate on every flat surface in the Dean’s office, numerous  quantities of school property defaced, water damage and the  _smell_ a nightmare. A quarter of the senior class that year nearly didn’t graduate.

Tom sees a faint smile curve the corners of Dai’s mouth and flit away as fast. Anyone not familiar with him would miss it. Tom blinks, very carefully.

It’s been seven months and he still knows how to read him.

To be honest, Tom tunes out the reason for Dai’s presence in his office. Tries tuning him out completely because maybe that will settle his fraying sanity and Tom will wake up, nightmare and  _not real_ , tangled in Anne Glass’s warm limbs.

He sits down at his desk, shuffles a few papers around. A bunch of blue books sit neatly stacked on his desk. But he flips one open in mild curiosity and shuts it quickly enough he can totally pretend he didn’t see the word revolution.

Tom turns his attention back to Dai, because evidently it’s pointless ignoring the elephant in the room.

Dai stands with his back straight, hands clasped behind, and his attention clearly focused on the Dean. Every bit standing at attention, the kind of stance Colonel Weaver won’t admit grounds him in familiar territory during an unfathomable war.

The same way Karen Nadler, all of eighteen years old and an expert with so little practice, sets up things like humanity’s future and hundreds of former friends’ lives in domino line and flicks the first brick forward.

She earns Tom Mason’s grudging thanks.

Thanks, because the war with the Espheni and all his encounters with alien monsters never made brutality reality more clearly to Tom, more deeply clear, than watching Karen Nadler turn an electric prod toward Anne and unborn child. Karen kissing Hal and his son turning limp in her grasp. At her order, Dai flung at a wall hard enough the sickening crack of impact echoes in Tom’s nightmares. Strung up in living ropes, watching it all, Tom has never since felt so utterly helpless.

It’s what propels Tom to stand after the Dean shakes Dai’s hand and exists Tom’s office, Dai poised to follow.

“Mr. Harde,” Tom speaks before losing the courage, “a minute?”

Quick flicker of irritation smooths over Dai’s features, always so sparse with everything. Speech, time, and always patience. But he waits. He always did, for Tom.

This at least, is  _Dai_.

Tom invades his personal space. Knows from the moment Dai’s eyes narrow and the hairs on the back of Tom’s neck prick up again, he has exactly a rough minute before hands twitching at Dai’s sides might decide to hell with manners.

“I’m sorry,” Tom says.  He feels wetness on his cheeks. What must be the face of a tired man, buried in grief, gives Dai pause. “You’ll have to forgive me.”

“For –”

An arm slings around Dai’s waist, jerking him closer, another wrapping around his shoulder, drawing him in. He goes rigid in Tom’s arms but he’s  _real_.

He’s real, at least here, solid and alive. Like Rebecca, and the gentle whiff of strawberry scented shampoo mixed with deep woods brings Tom somewhat close to home.


End file.
